The Cranky Flier » KLM

KLM’s 1 Hour Social Media Guarantee Fails the Test

CF — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:45:15 +0000

As we all know, there are some airlines that do a good job of responding to customers via social media channels and there are others that just don’t. Then there’s KLM, which has decided to go above and beyond and guarantee a response within 1 hour to any Twitter or Facebook post. ANY tweet or post? In the words of Barney Stinson . . . challenge accepted. Unfortunately, KLM failed miserably.

First, I had to make sure I understood the limits of this thing. After speaking to some PR folks, I found that if you tweet @KLM or leave a message on the airline’s Facebook page, then KLM will respond within an hour. This doesn’t include country-specific KLM handles, like @KLM_US, so I had to limit my search. (Those will only respond during business hours.)

I asked if this only guaranteed a response to questions, but it sounds like KLM is trying to respond to just about everything that comes in the door. This is what I was told:

Anyone in the world can send a tweet or leave a message on Facebook and there will be a response personally within one hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. . . . As for sarcastic questions and complaints, KLM responds with apologies and tries to remedy the error.

Ok, I get it, but what if it isn’t a complaint and just a random statement? I asked for clarification:

No it doesn’t even have to be a question to get a response! If KLM is in the tweet KLM will respond if they can help.

Hmm, so “if they can help,” huh? That would seem to limit it to some extent, but that would’t stop me from trying. I opted to start with probably the least likely thing to get a response.

Seemed like a good way to see if KLM really would respond to EVERY tweet. And it didn’t. I never heard a word. I guess that’s not too surprising – it was just a random statement. I forgot about my quest and then picked it up again yesterday with two more tries. In the middle of the night Amsterdam time (anyone can do it during business hours), I sent a couple tweets. I thought I’d really put KLM to the test.

I created a throwaway account to see if the airline would respond to anyone, just in case my account was flagged for response for some reason. (This was pitched to me by a PR agency, so I figured they’d be watching @crankyflier.) This account has no followers, no tweets, and no profile pic. It’s clearly just a trash account. I looked at the time, found a comment that would make sense (the flight to Houston left just under an hour after I sent it), and put it out there with bad grammar and punctuation just for effect.

I got nothing. I stopped looking after an hour because by then, the flight would have already left and a response would have been worthless. So I thought I’d go easy on KLM and throw out a softball just to get a basic response. This tweet I sent from my @crankyflier account asking a basic, straightforward, easy question, and if they did have my Twitter account flagged for response, it would pop right up.

It took a little over 3 hours before I received a response with the most unhelpful answer ever. KLM and Delta aren’t even in the same terminal at LAX. Even if Delta does staff the KLM counter, it’s a KLM counter and KLM needs to know what hours it operates. Wow, this sucks. KLM really is not doing this right.

I was particularly bugged by the 3 hour response time. Maybe Twitter was just suffering through delays. Yeah, right. There was no fail whale to be found, but just in case, I sent an airline that knows how to run social media a tweet.

As you can see, within 6 minutes, I had my response. Thank you, Delta, for really doing an awesome job with this. But let’s get back to KLM. That one hour thing is a guarantee, right? So I should get something since they failed so miserably.

Bzzt. Wrong answer. It’s a hollow guarantee that’s not backed up by anything. And a guarantee that’s not backed up by anything isn’t much of a guarantee at all. So, kudos to KLM for putting together a great, ambitious effort. But you guys really blew it in the implementation.

Only Two Airlines Left Flying a Douglas Widebody Commercially

CF — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:13:07 +0000

This week Finnair retired its last MD-11 airplane with a flight from Delhi to Bangkok. With that retirement, only KLM is still operating an MD-11 commercially. In fact, there are only two airlines operating any Douglas widebody commercially anywhere in the world. Biman Bangladesh still flies a couple DC-10s around. As a resident of Long Beach, where Douglas built those airplanes for 60 sixty years, this is really very sad.

Though the DC-10 had some serious problems when it rolled out in the 1970s resulting in devastating accidents, once the issues were fixed, the plane went on to be a reliable flying tank. Personally, I have great memories flying DC-10s. My first intercontinental flight was on an SAS DC-10 from LA to Copenhagen in 1985. Most of my other DC-10 flights were taking me to Hawai’i. (No wonder the memories are good.)

I can remember flying Western, American, United, and even Delta (when they briefly operated the DC-10s they inherited from Western) to Hawai’i. I even flew on some more interesting characters – World Airways when they had scheduled flights, for example. One time, I remember flying on a Leisure Air-operated ex-United DC-10 flying under the Suntrips banner. It’s probably fitting that the last time I flew on a DC-10 was on a Hawaiian aircraft from LA to Maui on July 11, 2001.

The MD-11 first flew in 1990 with Finnair, an airline which stayed loyal to the type for 20 years. Unfortunately, not many others felt the same way. The MD-11 was a longer, more efficient update of the DC-10 but it didn’t live up to its performance specs. Airlines walked away early and it never regained its footing. Besides, why buy 3 engines when you could stick with 2? The MD-11 did find a very successful home as a cargo airplane, however, and it continues to fly in great numbers in that capacity today.

I had two experiences on the MD-11. My first was in the early 1990s flying from LA to Portland on Delta. Seems like a strange route, but remember, Delta has tried to make Portland its transpacific gateway. This airplane fed that network.

The other was, conveniently, on good ole’ Finnair. In October 1998, I flew roundtrip from New York to Helsinki on my first big trip using pass travel as an airline employee. We flew over there for the weekend, and I just thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Over 600 Douglas widebodies rolled off the line here in Long Beach, and now it’s almost impossible to find one flying passengers around. If you’d like to get on one, your best bet is to ship yourself via FedEx. If that’s not your idea of fun, you can always try to get on one of the two remaining passenger operators worldwide.

As I mentioned, the last passenger MD-11 operator is KLM. They still are flying their fleet from their Amsterdam home to the following cities:

Bonaire
Delhi
Guayaquil
Montreal
Panama City
Paramaribo
Quito
St Maarten
Toronto
Vancouver

In addition, for most of September, the airplane will go to Atlanta and Dubai.

If you want to fly a DC-10, well, that’s a lot tougher. The last passenger operator of that airplane is Biman Bangladesh. They are quickly phasing them out for 777s, but they still have some flying from Dhaka to the following cities on random days:

Abu Dhabi
Chittagong
Dammam
Doha
Dubai
Hong Kong
Muscat
Riyadh
Sylhet

My guess is you won’t see these flying for much more than a couple years, so get out there and hop on one while you still have the chance.

Photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianfuller/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33465428@N02/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
http://www.flickr.com/photos/husseinabdallah/ / CC BY 2.0

Alitalia’s LAX Reception

CF — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:12:08 +0000

I know you guys have been champing at the bit, waiting for an update on the latest with Alitalia. I’ve actually been wanting to write about this for a little while, but I figured I’d wait until I went to last night’s launch party at LAX for the new LAX-Rome service. It was a surreal event; like hanging out on the Titanic while half the ship is already under water.

As for the event itself, it was a relatively nice and simple affair over at the always fantastic Flight Path Learning Center. The food and Peroni were good, and they handed out a few freebie tickets on the new LAX nonstop. I think the highlight was when Alitalia’s North America head said that the current situation made it seem like Alitalia should be on Jerry Springer. At least he has a sense of humor about it. I actually felt sorry for some of these guys. So what exactly is the latest?

When we left off last time, Alitalia had accepted the AF/KL bid and even the government had gotten behind it. But, they still needed to get the unions to back the bid. Um, that didn’t happen. And even worse, the Italian government fell apart. Without the approvals they needed, AF/KL walked away, but I’m sure they’d come back if all the other parties decided to stop acting like children.

In the election for the new government, Alitalia, the symbol of national pride (what a horrible symbol), was one of the top campaign issues. Silvio Berlusconi, the man that the Economist called “unfit to lead a modern democracy“, campaigned on the idea that he could prevent Alitalia from falling into non-Italian hands.

Sadly, he won.

So now, not only are the unions against AF/KL, but so is the government. Let’s be clear here. Berlusconi talks a big game. He’s said:

Many businesses, including big ones, have come forward to guarantee the necessary capital for a completely Italian team which, once it knows the accounts of Alitalia, will be able to present a bid.

Um, no. Or, somebody will come forward, but it won’t be even close to being as attractive of a bid as the one from AF/KL. Really, AF/KL is the only true hope for this company to survive, and Berlusconi is beating his chest, acting proud, and sounding like a complete idiot. Of course, he has to cave, but not until he can save some face. Just yesterday, he said:

As concerns the Air France hypothesis, if we went back to the initial project for Alitalia which gave the same weight to Alitalia as the other two airlines as well as being Italian orientated, I would be happy to discuss the possibility and once I take office I will speak about this subject with President Sarkozy.

See, he’s starting to change his tune. You know what’ll happen next. He’ll get a couple of concessions and then he’ll let AF/KL buy the airline. Then he’ll try and look like a hero even though he’s doing nothing good.

I guess I should be happy about this. When AF/KL is allowed to take them over, it’ll probably mean I’ll have to find another “Worst Airline Ever” to pick on. I’m just going to enjoy this for now.

Listen, Listen to the Music

CF — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:50:00 +0000

Yeah, it’s a crude drawing, but I think you get the point. It’s time for iPod + airplane.

Apple announced that they will be partnering with Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United to let customers use their iPod with existing inflight entertainment systems. Customers will be able to plug their iPods in and charge them during flight. At the same time, they can watch videos through the personal seatback screens.

United confirmed they will be installing this, though it will have to be a very limited installation. There are only personal seatback screens on international 767s and 777s, so on other planes it’s not worth much. It’s unclear if you will be able to charge your iPod on other aircraft in the fleet even though there is no seatback screen.

In a very strange turn, Air France and KLM are saying that they have not agreed to install the system yet. They say only informal talks have taken place.